Explore a wonderful resource of interactive, Flash-based whiteboard activities for preschool and elementary students. Choose from EYFS (early childhood), KS1 (approximately ages 6-8) or KS2 (approximately ages 8-11). Subjects include math, literacy, science, geography, and more. Each activity includes a short explanation with suggestions for classroom use. Many of the literacy activities relate to familiar children's stories such as Goldilocks, Cinderella, and the Three Little Pigs. All resources can be sorted by subject or grade level and include a link to copy for embedding in classroom blogs, websites, or as a bookmark on classroom computers. The site originates in the UK, so it uses British English.

In the Classroom

Use activities on this site on your interactive whiteboard (or projector) as whole class activities or in classroom computer centers. Share the site with parents through your classroom website or newsletter as a resource for skills practice at home.

LearnZillion is a video platform that combines video lessons, assessments, and progress reporting. Lessons highlight Common Core Standards in Math for grades 3 - 9. Each lesson is given in a video format, generally about 5 minutes per lesson. The lesson ends with a practice video. You are also presented with practice problems, and the answers are demonstrated and discussed. Teachers can sign up for a free account offering many special features of the site. Create customized playlists for students by dragging and dropping videos onto your playlist. Many lessons have a behind the scenes commentary just for teachers to watch before teaching a lesson to explain the rationale behind what is included. Featured materials can be downloaded for use in class. Short quizzes at the end of each lesson are scored and updated in student profiles, providing you with quick assessment information. Create individualized playlists for students to customize and differentiate instruction. Find lessons by using the Explore link on the site, choosing a general topic, then a more specific category. Each lesson includes the Common Core Standard addressed above the video lesson.

In the Classroom

Create a classroom account and create playlists for different instructional content. Assign content as stuednts move along in the curriculum. Assign videos for students to use for review and remediation, or assign videos for self-motivated students who are ready to move ahead. Share this site with parents (on your class website or wiki) to use as review when helping their student with homework.

Math Pickle goes WAY beyond traditional math drill and skill games or math problem worksheets. There are mathematics videos for kindergarten through twelfth grade. The videos feature real students engaging in inspiring math problems and puzzles. The videos often speak to unsolved math problems throughout history. In the unsolved problem, you must use developmentally appropriate math to work out the problem. To begin, choose a grade level to search. Each video for that grade level has a short description of the task to be completed. Most videos are fairly short, from 3 to 10 minutes, and are accompanied by a PowerPoint and a Keynote presentation of the lesson. Many also include some additional worksheets or handouts. Read video explanations to find out whether they are intended for teacher or student viewing-- or both.

In the Classroom

Bookmark this site to use as a resource for challenging math activities for the classroom. Use these videos and activities with gifted students to promote problem solving, trial and error, and exploration of concepts. This collection includes a wealth of professional material to inspire new teaching strategies. Videos are hosted on YouTube. If your district blocks YouTube, then they may not be viewable. You could always view that at home and bring them to class "on a stick" to share. Use a tool such as KeepVid reviewed here to download the videos from YouTube.

Practice Math, Science and English with Viral Vinnie. Choose one of the topics to get started; then put in initials, choose an avatar, and decide to play against all players or just known players. There is an option to create a league name with known players. After submitting this information, the questions will start. All questions are multiple choice and earn points for correct answers. Also, the player with the fastest time will be indicated after each question. The questions encompass a wide variety of subjects and difficulty levels. The site originates in the UK, so spellings and word choices are British.

In the Classroom

This site is perfect to use on your interactive whiteboard as a center or quick review activity. Create a link on classroom computers and allow students to "test themselves" during free time. Send a link to the site home on your class website or newsletter for students to play at home. This is a great site to visit during the summer to keep students fresh. Use the site as an example, and have students create their own multiple choice game for any subject or based on individual research topics.

Zoo Whiz is an education site that encourages kids to be "whizzes" in math, reading, and word development. There are levels and content for students from 5 to 15 years old. There are over 11,200 interactive activities to help unleash the whiz in every student. Once sign-up (free) is complete, you are guided to provide the age range (5-6 is the youngest). This tailors activities to the individual child (great for differentiation). As students master the skill, more difficult activities are presented. Parents and teachers can easily view progress. The activities go beyond simple drill and skill to build higher order thinking skills and problem solving strategies. As students play games, they earn Zoo Whiz "money" that will allow them to purchase animals to build up their zoo. It is necessary to create an account on the site. Teachers can set up a class account with individual accounts for each student. Students can use the same account on home computers. Premium accounts are available with additional activities; however, there are many items available on the free portion of the site.

In the Classroom

Create a classroom account and accounts for each student to monitor students' progress. This is an excellent tool for differentiating. If you don't want individual accounts, create one classroom account and have students can take turns earning money for the zoo and deciding how to spend it. Share this site with parents through your newsletter or classroom website as a resource for practice at home.

Zoodles offers a safe web platform for kids that includes fun and educational games, videos, and activities. The BASIC membership to this tool includes countless activities in a variety of subject areas. Many of the activities come from other sites (Starfall, PBS kids, etc.). But this is a nice compilation of subjects and activities. The safety in this program is that once it is downloaded and opened, children don't view the regular computer toolbars anymore. Thus they can't search the web on their own. To exit the program, click QUIT and OK.

There is a parent play-along mode that helps guide learning experiences in a more personal way. Zoodles has been created to work on virtually any type of computer, including tablets and smart phones. Games are searchable by age (toddler to 8 yrs old), and subject. Many games will also have parent ratings with the educational and fun value of the activity. Creating an account is easy and requires simple user information including email and the child's age. This is used to populate age-appropriate games. There is a premium membership with more features.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Create 2 or 3 (or more, as needed) classroom accounts with different age levels to provide diversity for students. Each account then be bookmarked on classroom computers for student use. Share this site through your classroom blog or newsletter as a resource for learning games at home. Use activities from the site on your interactive whiteboard or projector as a classroom activity. Provide this link to parents to use on rainy days or during the summer.

Make unique and creative flower designs. Choose a petal color and style; then drag the mouse inside the flower box to create your own flower. If the design isn't up to par, click "undo last petal" to erase. Other options include increasing and decreasing opacity of the color and number of petals to include. Multiple colors can be used in a single flower by adding petals onto the design. When the design is complete, it can be shared via email with others or directly on the site (with a title and name of city). Noe: the email window opens as a pop-ip, so you will need to allow pop-ups from this site. Once the email window is open, you can also COPY the image by right-clicking it tand choosing COPY image to paste it into a document, slide, etc. You don't even have to SEND the email. Other designs can be viewed by choosing the "load a flower" option to the right of the design screen.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Save this site in your favorites on your class computers. Introduce this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Allow students to create their own designs and use those drawings as inspiration for an art project. Show them how to copy/paste from the "send by email" pop-up. Encourage re-creating flowers shared by others as a way to study shape, color, radial symmetry, and design. Create flowers to teach about analogous and complementary color schemes. In a language arts class, allow students to create poems or short rhymes to accompany their created flowers. Make Mothers Day email messages, cards, or thank you notes using these images. Teach letter writing or email "etiquette" at the same time.

Springo is a portal designed for preschool and elementary students to surf for age appropriate websites and information. Click if you are under 8 or over 8, and a list of links appears. Choose if you are a boy or girl to find activities geared more towards gender stereotypes (car activities for boys, princess games for girls, etc.). Note that the actual content is NOT part of Springo. All links on this site are approved by Springo staff; however. Picture icons help you find information like homework help, sports websites, online research resources, art activities, educational interactives, and (of course) games. Sample topics in the Under 8 section include: Educational Games, Coloring Pages, Learning, Characters, Sports, Hobbies, Games for Girls, and many more. If you are over 8, some of the sample activities include: Reference, Science, Math, Learning, Making Friends (warning: some of these sites involve social networking), Hobbies, and more!This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Have younger students use this site when doing research or information searches. You can feel more comfortable allowing students to search the web. Show them how to mark it as a Favorite or make a shortcut on classroom computers to access it directly. Share some of these activities on your interactive whiteboard or projector as a small group center. Allow students to explore the sites shared on their own.

This new "freebie" from Brainpop goes beyond the usual videos and quizzes. It includes several engaging interactives, some created by Brainpop and others linked to outside sources. Game Up, a free area of Brain Pop, is a collection of free online games that are linked to Common Core and State Standards. Science, math, social studies, and health activities provide challenge for every learner. This free gem also includes activities for grades K-3 and ESL/ELL students. Some of the topics (at the time of this review) included: Drake Equation, Court Quest, Cell Command, Blood Typing, Make Me Sick, The Diabetic Dog Game, and Food Fight.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Use Game Up to introduce, illustrate, review, or assess concepts. Share the activities on your interactive whiteboard or projector for students to operate as a class activity. Use one of the activities as a learning center. Be sure to put this as a link on your website to allow students a great way to reinforce learning both in and out of your class.

In the Classroom

Strengthen your student's problem solving and critical thinking skills. Offer class competitions to increase motivation and thinking. Gaming provides high interest in your hardest to motivate students. Many of these games easily intrigue gifted and advanced classes. Inspire computer classes to create their own games with a place to post with high usability. Use as center time activity, reward time, or extra challenges.

Jim Reed's Home Page contains an extensive collection of math resources created by this teacher or organized from other sources. Although mainly for high school, there are also collected resources for elementary and middle school. Scroll down the long list to see the resources (some with short descriptors). Many are also categorized by topic: number- concepts and operation, patterns, algebra, geometry, statistics, and others. At the time of this review, some of the external links to other sites were not working. However, the majority of links were operational.

In the Classroom

Share resources on your interactive whiteboard (or projector) to demonstrate math concepts with students. Share this site with students and allow time to explore and interact with activities correlating to concepts being taught in class. Have students complete an activity. Then, If you have laptops available (or a lab), use Edmodo reviewed here for students to microblog about their discoveries as they navigate this content-rich site. Be sure to toss some questions into the silent Edmodo discussion to guide them into the "nooks and crannies."

Math teachers (and others) will enjoy using this site to find literature that corresponds to math topics. What a great way for cross-curricular connections! To find a book, choose from a list of math topics such as angles, percents, regrouping, place value, and many others. A list of books that can be used will be displayed along with a link to purchase the book on Amazon. The concept is simple, yet can be very useful to classroom teachers or parents looking for literature options to connect with math lessons.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Bookmark and use this site as a resource to find literature to include with math lessons. Provide a link to this link on your classroom website for parents to use at home to find literature connection to math concepts! If you like the idea of connecting math and independent reading, TeachersFirst also offers a CurriConnects list for "Math in Use."

This site provides resources for educators interested in improving students mathematics learning and development. The site includes video examples of innovative teaching methods and tools for immediate use in classrooms. Each grade level offers links to Core Ideas and most offer MARS Tasks, Rubrics, and Analysis. The MARS Task is where lesson ideas are found. These lessons are available in portions (task, rubric, questions, etc.), or as a large downloadable file containing all portions of the lesson. Be sure to click on the Common Core Resources to find tasks and materials, by grade level or standard, you can use immediately. Many other resources are available such as a school-wide problem of the month, professional development resources, and administrative leadership resources. Be sure to take the video tour of the site as an overview of all that is available.

Use a marshmallow challenge to motivate your students! The concept of this project is to have teams of people work together to create a free standing structure that supports a marshmallow. Sounds overly simple? Well, not always. The given materials for each team are simple, inexpensive, and require creative thinking and problem solving skills to use! All in all this adds up to a fun, interesting, and entertaining activity for young to older students, business people, and any group that needs to learn how to work and think together. Spaghetti, string, marshmallows and masking tape are all the supplies that you will need. Have fun with this, your students are sure to do so! The site recommends giving your class one hour to complete the project and activities. They also mention this project would work for smaller groups (4 students) up to larger groups (800), divided into groups of 2 or 4 and working together. There is a typo in the opening paragraph of the site. However the activity content was worth looking over the typo.

In the Classroom

This engineering challenge would be great during a unit on structures. However, in ANY classroom it would be a solid and creative way to teach design process, group skills, and creative problem solving. This activity is so versatile that it could be use in any grade, even at the college or business level. Of course in younger elementary grades, more instruction would be necessary and possibly some parent volunteers. Its lessons are multiple, from fluency, flexibility, possibility thinking, and promoting originality. In science classes, try including this activity in a lesson on gravity or forces. Prior to implementing this lesson, watch the TED talks video link for yourself. (These links are available at this site.) It is a worthwhile investment of seven minutes, and download and read the adobe acrobat file on the project. It may be a good idea, depending on the age of your students to create a short PowerPoint with the rules and instructions. Also, a visual timer and musical timer would be a great idea for this challenge. Use a site such as the Online Countdown Timer (reviewed here). Show the timer on your interactive whiteboard (or projector) so students are aware of how much time remains. The materials are best given to teams in a small brown bag so that there is an element of surprise and suspense during the instructional period. Another idea is to share this with your administrators, it would make a great challenge for a interactive faculty meeting especially if team building and thinking skills are trying to be built by the administration between faculty members.

Save hundreds of dollars spicing up your curriculum with virtual field trips! This site has "field trips" to take, instructions for creating, and resources for other virtual field trip sites. Field trips for; Career, fine arts, foreign language, health and PE, language arts, math, library, media, professional development, science, social studies, and technology are given. There is a plethora of topics - perfect for research and "virtual" travel. The topics are too broad to list all of them, but some include tessellations, dinosaurs, water cycle, medieval times, Civil War, oil painting, and much more! Receive a detailed tutorial for finding instructions on asking permission for field trips, creating virtual field trips, and evaluating the experience. No bus required! At the time of this review, three of the links under "Visit Related Sites" were not working.

In the Classroom

Immerse your students into your studies with a close up in depth look through virtual field trips. Visit places where time, money, and mileage inhibit your dreams for bringing your students into wondrous worlds. Find ways to visit where your class has never gone before. Create a personalized field trip to meet your every need with the detailed tutorials given. Find ways to motivate your most reluctant learners. ESL/ELL learners will appreciate the visit. Reach all types of learners through a class visit. Use field trips as a whole class anticipatory guide, a center activity, a home connection, or even as extra credit. Challenge your gifted students to be guides to their own learning. Make your class go global!

Use Calculator.com to access a variety of calculators to use in a classroom or as a reference tool. Choose from standard, fraction, scientific, percent, mortgage, area, units converter, as well as other calculators. Note: This site has many ads as calculators are chosen. This site includes advertising.

Nobelprize.org is the official website of the Nobel Prize. Here you find information about Alfred Nobel, the prizewinners, interviews, and photos. Videos of interviews of Nobel peace prizewinners, speeches, ceremonies, interviews, banquets, lectures, announcements, award ceremonies, and documentaries fill the gamut of all of the prizewinners. The Nobel prizes awards are in literature, chemistry, medicine, peace, economics, and physics. Varieties of educational games/activities help explain many of the Nobel Award winners' work. This site clearly explains and illustrates the purpose of the awards, the award winners, and their ideas. Videos give an insider look at each of the winners.

In the Classroom

Inspire your students to strive for excellence! Show students original, creative, thinking. Let students know they can understand the ideas awarded by trying the educational activities offered. Follow each year's announcements and award ceremonies. Use as an inspiration when beginning your own Nobel Prize winning awards competitions. Encourage students to use critical thinking skills to form opinions based on facts. Gifted programs can easily incorporate many of the ideas into the curriculum. Lead your students to Nobel Award winning thinking.

This site features a growing list of Speed Math shortcuts and Smart Math techniques that helps anyone attempt math problems in unique ways. At LazyMaths you'll find two sections - Speed Math and Smart Math. Speed Math offers interesting math shortcuts that will help you master basic math tasks like multiplication, division, squaring of numbers, etc. Choose a type of problem to learn a shortcut, then watch the video presentation that takes you through the steps of the problem. Most videos also include a PDF practice sheet for using the shortcuts offered. The video and practice sheet format is the same in the Smart Math portion of the site, however, the goal here is to help you solve complicated math problems by simplifying and solving in a shorter amount of time.This site includes advertising.

In the Classroom

Share the videos on your interactive whiteboard to offer students an alternative means for understanding problem solving processes. Use this site as an example, then have students use Screenr (reviewed here) to make narrated recordings with their own steps for solving math problems.

This PBS site is a reorganized collection of over 16,000+ public media offerings (including radio and photographs), arranged specifically for preK-12 teachers. You can search by subject and grade level across many subjects. After viewing three offerings, you must join (for free) to continue. Membership includes the option of saving favorites. You can also find correlations to state standards. The site is still in development, so material is being added frequently.

In the Classroom

Find more details and teacher information under "Customization for States and District" to align the offerings here with your state's standards. Check this site for an introduction to a curriculum topic or unit or when looking for support activities to reinforce concepts. Use this site as the starting point for individual or group projects. Share the interactives as a learning center or on your interactive whiteboard or projector. This is one that you want to save in your favorites.

This site offers elementary math activities for use on your interactive whiteboard. Hovering over each image offers a description of the activity and the math concept taught. Activities for the youngest students include adding spots to giraffes, subtraction to the 5 little ducks song, a countdown clock, and more or less practice. One especially interesting activity is the Magic Square which offers choices of puzzles and the ability to record information while solving the puzzle. Activities for older students provide practice with place value, multiplication, decimals, and negative numbers. Many of the activities can also be downloaded for later use by using the link toward the bottom of the page. Don't miss the Build a Snowman for wintertime fun counting eyes, hands, etc.

In the Classroom

Use this site as an anticipatory set or "activator" to introduce a unit or lesson on a projector or interactive whiteboard. Use one of the activities on your interactive whiteboard as a math center. Share this link on your class website for students (and parents) to access at home. Selected activities could also serve as writing prompts after the math is done: tell about your giraffe or snowman!